Sandra dabbed her mouth on her napkin. Around the dining room, plates clattered and corks popped.
They finished the lobsters, had mango ice cream and coffee, and the captain brought the check nestled in a leather sleeve on a silver tray. 'I trust everything was satisfactory, Dr. Greenbaum?'
'Yeah, terrific,' said Gino, signing. 'Here's a little something for you.' The captain retreated, backing and bobbing, and Gino dropped his napkin onto the table. 'Walk onna beach?'
Outside, a yellow half-moon was perched over the Florida Straits, and a light south breeze that smelled of dry shells and seaweed was just barely rustling the palms. Underfoot, the trucked-in sand felt cakey with the moisture of the evening. Gino handed Joey a cigar and unwrapped one for himself. The gesture was enough to make Sandra and Vicki fall in side by side, leaving the men to trail behind, wreathed in their blue and nasty smoke.
For a couple of minutes they walked in silence, and Joey, to his own surprise, found himself slipping into a state of mysterious contentment. To walk next to a bigger, older, stronger brother was a comfort. It almost didn't matter what you thought of him, it only mattered that he was there, like a roof, like a wall, like anything big and solid that protected you or surrounded you.
'I'm sorry I didn't come see ya before I left,' said Joey. 'I shoulda.'
'Don't matter,' said Gino, waving the apology away with a red flash of his cigar. 'But kid, ya shoulda gone to see Pop. I think ya hurt his feelings.'
'Maybe I wanted to.'
'Hey, ya wanted to, ya wanted to. But that don't make it right.'
And they walked. Gino's shoes plowed over the sand with the heavy assurance of wide tires. His thick chest blacked out a broad swath of the Atlantic. The women, walking with the grim purpose of after-dinner exercise, had gotten almost out of sight.
'Ya know,' said Joey, gesturing back toward the twinkling bulk of the Flagler House, 'I been wanting to see this place since the first day I got here.'
Gino exhaled some smoke and said nothing.
'I think Pop used to come here with my mother.'
Gino stiffened and bit down on his cigar, but Joey didn't notice. The younger brother was drifting into memory and into trust, two places he didn't often visit.
'Yeah,' he went on, 'I'm pretty sure this is the place. I don't remember the name, but my mother useta describe it to me. Said it had the big dining room with the hanging-over porch. Said it had its own beach, private from the others-'
Gino stopped walking and stood with the yellow moonlight on his shiny dark hair. 'Joey, I don't really wanna hear where my father went to catch some pussy.'
Joey did not know he was about to hit his brother. He didn't notice that the cigar had dropped out of his hand and was glowing dull red on the beach, and he didn't feel his arm draw back, coiling to throw a punch. He was about as surprised as Gino when his fist slammed into the stronger man's gut, finding the soft triangle at the bottom of the ribs.
The air came out of Gino as from a ruptured football, a popping whoosh followed by a long wheeze. Helplessly, he doubled up and stayed that way for the endless moment of wondering if his lungs would ever again remember how to breathe. He struggled to lift his head, and strained his eyeballs upward to look at Joey with the befuddlement of a bystander who finds himself winged.
Joey stared down at him and felt no remorse, only fear. Gino could beat the hell out of him, easily. He'd seen Gino fight, with his fists and his feet and his elbows, he'd seen him use the top of his head to knock out other men's teeth, and the thought of it gave Joey a sickening awareness of cigar smoke turning to brown juice at the back of his throat.
But Gino didn't go for him. He straightened up slowly, arched his back, and threw his arms behind him to stretch his chest. 'Fuck you do that for?'
'You don't talk about my mother that way.'
'Talk about your mother? What is this, Joey, the fucking schoolyard? Talk about my mother. What are you, a fucking baby?'
Joey locked onto Gino's hard narrow eyes, and Gino was the first to quit the stare. 'Awright,' he said. 'Awright. I shouldn'ta said it. But Joey, let's you and me decide on something right now. We don't talk about my father and your mother, O.K.? We just don't talk about it.'
Joey shifted his feet in the caked sand and nodded. He couldn't have said why he'd raised the subject anyway. He didn't need Gino to tell him never to raise it again.
'Now where's my fucking cigar?' said Gino. He scanned the moonlit beach and found his corona smoldering a couple of yards away, where it had blown out of his mouth. He went to retrieve the smoke, and as he dusted the sand off it, his face took on an expression that was almost like genuine approval. 'Joey,' he said, 'you're a crazy little fucker. I mean, to hit me, man, you gotta be fucking nuts. I mean, crazy.'
— 20 -
Just before five the next day, Bert d'Ambrosia came walking down Duval Street in a seersucker shirt of mint- green and cobalt-blue stripes, colors that vibrated in the orange light of late afternoon. Unseen, and with his nervous chihuahua quivering against his chest, he watched Joey from half a block away, saw him dance toward his prospects, lean toward them as if he could somehow stretch his being to surround them, smile the salesman's hungry smile, and launch into his pitch. Eight hours of that, Bert thought. It must take a hell of a lot of energy. You had to show a lot of animation. That's what people responded to, animation. Like show biz. You wanted to get people on your side, you had to put out for them. And the street was hot. As March advanced, the sun climbed higher in the sky and sliced more relentlessly between the shimmering roofs. The cars and the scooters shot their hot blue puffs at sidewalk level, you felt them on your shins.
'Joey, why don't you wear shorts at least?'
'Oh, hi, Bert,' Joey said. He swept off his repaired sunglasses and raked a forearm across his sweaty brow.
'No, I'm serious,' said the old man, as if Joey had suggested he wasn't. 'You'd be a lot more comfortable.'
Joey gave a noncommittal shrug. He felt he'd given in enough already. He had the pink shirt, the sneakers. He'd broken down and bought a smugly cheap plastic watchband like Zack Davidson's. But shorts, that was where he drew the line. Where he came from, only dorks wore shorts. He could picture them. Dorks in shorts waiting for the bus on Astoria Boulevard. Dorks in shorts collecting deposit bottles in shopping carts. Dorks in shorts, with baseball caps, lumbering in overweight packs toward Shea Stadium. Nah, forget about it. These were losers with hairy knees and goofy socks. Even BertJoey didn't like to think anything bad about Bert, but face it, Bert looked a little dorky in his shorts. Too much empty space around his shrunken thighs. Too much skin for the amount of meat that was left. But O.K., with old guys it didn't matter as much. Old guys deserved some extra slack, they could look a little dorky without totally giving up their dignity.
'Got time for a quick one?' Bert asked.
'Sure,' said Joey, and they crossed Duval Street, heading for the Eclipse Saloon.
The tavern was cool and dim, dim enough so that Don Giovanni's oversized pupils opened wide and gleamed with a morbid mauve glow. The bar was just starting to fill up with that select group of Key Westers who actually worked and therefore had a set time to begin their drinking. Cliff the bartender had daydreamed his way through the sluggish hours and now he greeted them with the distracted gentleness of a man just waking up from a nap. ' 'Lo, Bert. The usual? Joey?'
Cliff started in on Bert's whiskey sour while listening for Joey's order. As far as Cliff could remember, he never asked for the same thing twice. And the fact was that while Joey enjoyed the ritual of the cocktail, the shapes of the glasses, the sound of shaken ice, the sheen of frothy liquor cascading out of stainless steel, and yes, the feel of alcohol trickling into his blood-stream, he'd never yet found a drink he liked more than other drinks. Which is to say, he hadn't found the drink that fit his image, because he hadn't found his image. 'Gimme a gin and tonic.'
'Salud,' said Bert.
